see the sense of rushing through the Glen at a rate that leaves no time to enjoy anything. The proprietor enlarges on the charms of Bridal Veil,-in vain; the Jolly Man has maintained his single blessedness too long to be ensnared by such a trifle. He doesn't care for Whispering Falls. What attraction have they when there are no fair companions to whisper to? Nor for the Fairies' Cascade. Who ever saw a fairy out on such a day as this? Even Glen Chaos, so suggestive of a bachelor's home, cannot lure him forward, and we have to go on without him.

Our guide knows of a short cut home from the upper end of the Glen, and as time is precious we decide to take it, trusting to find the Jolly Man resting his weary limbs at the Glen House, where we have left our carriages. Our trust is not misplaced.

After dinner the owner of another glen waits on us and begs to exhibit his prodigy,for, it appears, we have seen but two of the numerous natural curiosities of the kind in this region.

"What is your glen like?"

66

'Well, it isn't like either of them you've

EMPIRE FALL: GLEN EXCELSIOR.

less variety and greater diversity, its plan seeming to be to present no two scenes at all alike. At times the cliffs give place to wooded escarpments; vegetation creeps down into the gorge, and throws a network of beauty and grace-truly glen-like-between two spaces of precipitous rock. The falls are fewer, but, in the main, more massive; and the pools are square-cornered instead of oval. In short, the two glens are not rivals, but complements, and the sight of one heightens rather than lessens the enjoyment of the other.

At the foot of Jacob's Ladder-a long series of steep stairways to a natural tunnel, where the path leads through an angle of the cliff-the Jolly Man becomes suddenly serious. An irresistible desire comes over him to inspect at leisure certain charming scenes that we have passed too rapidly. He isn't tired-not a bit; but he doesn't

HECTOR FALLS SENECA LAKE.

"How high?"

"Two hundred and eighty feet, or thereabouts, they say. Have n't measured it my self."

"Never heard of such a high fall in this State," says the Geologist. "How far off is it ?"

"Only a mile, or a mile 'n a half; can take you there 'n back inside of an hour."

The Geologist is anxious to go; so is the Artist, and so the Junior, who has just come in from his third fruitless visit to the postoffice. How people can live with but one mail a day is a growing mystery to him.

"There's nothing to hinder your going," says the Executive; "but for one, I've seen enough. Besides, I have a little business

that must be attended to."

Singularly, all the seniors have letters to write, or some other urgent business to attend to; but of course that need not interfere with the rest.

"Any other glen-streams over that way?" "Oh yes; there's Hector Falls, a couple of miles further on; and a small stream that comes in at Board Point, half a mile beyond."

"Could you take us to them?"

Rather than not have us see his glen, our would-be entertainer consents to exhibit these rival curiosities also, and straightway fetches his wagon to carry us thither.

The day is so far spent that we do not try to explore the whole of Glen Excelsior, as the new attraction has been called.

Passing the narrow outlet where the stream escapes through a channel not more than two feet wide, cut deep into the cliff, we enter a long, dark ravine piercing far into the hill; a lovely strolling place for a hot summer's day, still cool and redolent of ferns and mosses and the spicy fragrance of young hemlocks. At one place a little blocking of the stream would make a beautiful lake, with shaded, mossy banks, shut in by steep and lofty, though not precipitous walls. But the commanding feature of the glen is Empire Fall, where the water slides over a sloping cliff of great height, darting wildly from side to side, and breaking into a storm of spray at the foot. This glen is destined to become a great favorite, especially with lovers of quiet beauty, and those who cannot endure, the severe climbing required by Watkins and Havana.

A quiet drive of half an hour, over a most delightful country road along the pleasant lake side, brings us to the double fall of Hector, where a stream, much larger than any of the glen streams, leaps into the lake over a quick succession of bold cliffs, falling two hundred feet or more in as many yards. The massive rock has been able to resist the erosive action of the stream so as to prevent the fall from breaking up into a series of cataracts running back into the hill. The fall has in consequence a stronger, more majestic aspect, than any of the glen falls that we have seen. What forms of beauty or grandeur the stream presents above, we cannot stay to discover;

MYSTIC CASCADE: GLENOLA.

we are eager to explore the nameless glen back of Board Point, and there is no time for delay.

"I don't think it will pay to go far into this glen," our guide remarks, as we approach its mouth. "There isn't any road through it, and it's dangerous climbing along the rocks in such slippery weather."

But our blood is up, and the prospect of rough climbing only makes the scramble more inviting. A pretty and tolerably high fall near the entrance gives promise of good things within; and, after directing our coachman to follow the road to the top of the ridge and there await us, we plunge into the

hill.

The stream is larger and the ravine deeper and darker, but in general plan this glen bears a strong resemblance to Glen Excelsior. For half a mile at a stretch we follow the brook bed through shaded dells, then ascend a fall or a series of them, and the level space is repeated. We know that we are diving deeper and deeper into the hill, and are confident that a high fall cannot be far ahead; so we clamber on, sometimes in the bed of the stream, sometimes along the slippery side of the ravine, clinging to roots

and bushes. Not unfrequently, after a toilsome climb, we turn an angle of the cliff and find ourselves face to face with a precipice we cannot scale, and have to go back and try another place. This is no fun to our host, whose entreaties to abandon our fruitless labor are profuse and urgent, rising almost to the pathetic at times when the ravine darkens, and there is imminent danger of our coming suddenly upon a fall whose height may dwarf his "highest fall in the State."

To tell the truth, we are a little tired ourselves, and having reached a fall whose singular beauty amply repays our toil and trouble, and whose precipitous face compels a difficult and circuitous climb nearly to the top of the gorge, we conclude to abandon the exploration, much to the satisfaction of our unwilling guide.

Our return is by the "upper road," through the quaint old village of Burdett, on the brow of the hill where the stream of Hector makes the first plunge in its wild descent to the lake. The clouds break away from the declining sun as we turn the crest of the hill and look down into the valley and across the lake. A lovelier view would be hard to find; but we are too tired for sentiment; besides our minds are so confused by the multitude of sights and sensations we have had to-day that we are incapable of estimating common things. We have done in a day an amount of sight-seeing that a fortnight would be too brief for. A summer month of healthful and ever-varying enjoyment could not exhaust the store of delights and surprises that this glen region affords; while the pleasant drives about the country and the sail up and down the lake would provide agreeable employment for an entire sea

son.

The closing day of our northward journey. begins like the first--indeed, like all, save yesterday, bright and cool, with the promise of abundant sunshine by and by. We proceed to breakfast deliberately. In truth all our movements are deliberate this morning. We are cheerfully grave; and though each avers that he never felt better, an air of constraint, a general stiffness, so to speak, seems to have come upon the entire company. Does it arise from thought of the approaching termination of our pleasant life on the Special? Or from what certain materialists would call physical memory of past enjoyments? It is hard to say; but the evident satisfaction with which each receives from all the rest individual assurance of feeling

first-rate suggests the latter. The Junior comes last to table.

"I thought I would take a breath of fresh air before breakfast," he says, apologetically. "Did you get your letter?" asks the Geologist bluntly.

The question is kindly meant; but the implied doubt of the motive of his morning walk touches the Junior to the quick, and there is less elation than there might otherwise have been in the tone of his affirmative reply. "Ah! delighted to hear it, truly. And is Mrs. Junior well?"

"Oh-ah-I-it wasn't from her!"

A sympathetic silence ensues, in which Junior forgets to manifest his accustomed surprise that there are no fresh oysters, Baltimore style, on the bill of fare.

For the first twenty miles above Watkins the road runs along the hillside in full view of the lake. Looking down upon its placid bosom and across to the beautiful slope that rises for miles beyond the opposite shore, a wide chess-board of fields and groves, we

cannot but think of the wonderful variety of views we have enjoyed along the route. Crossing three States from south to north, a mountain system, and several zones of vegetation, our course has led us through greater and more rapid contrasts of scenery, probably, than can be found in an equal distance in any other part of the country. River and rivulet and mountain torrent; broad valleys and rocky ravines; rolling hills and precipitous mountains; extensive reaches of fertile farm-land, and miles of wilderness clad with scarcely broken forests; wide expanses of rippling river shallows filled with innumerable islands, and the deep lake, motionless and silvery under the sun; the city, the hamlet, the lonely farmhouse, the lumberman's shanty -every variety of natural scenery, in short, every style of human habitation and a thousand varied forms of human enterprise have passed before us.

Vineyards abound along this western shore of the lake, and the Quiet Man has added to our store of comforts a crate or two of

their delicious fruit. The fragrant box proves more enticing than the lake, and the look-out is abandoned. The box is not half emptied, however, when Rock Stream is announced, the car stops on a bridge.

"Splendid view here! Come out and see it," exclaims the Executive, starting for the rear of the car, grape-box in hand, unconsciously removing the only excuse for declining his invitation. We follow on without delay, and are soon enjoying our grapes again, and a charming prospect besides. Above the bridge the stream dashes over a lofty and irregular cliff into a magnificent rotunda with overhanging walls fringed with firs and hemlocks. Beneath us the transparent water drops from the rotunda's mouth into a pebble-rimmed pool on the edge of the lake, which spreads its miles of shining surface still and unbroken, save in the distance where two converging ridges indicate the passage of the mid-day steamer just disappearing behind a projecting point.

Another mile of riding through the trees, along the rugged lake-side, and we stop on a still higher bridge across the deep gorge of Big Stream. The rock has a massive character here, like that of Hector Falls on the opposite shore, and gives promise of imposing falls within the dark, heavily wooded ravine the stream has cut into the hill; but we have no time to go and see. Below the bridge the water pours through a deep gash in the rock, then over a square-cut ledge

into a quiet basin, from which it flows peacefully to the lake through the little hamlet of Glenola,-half a dozen houses built on the tongue of shale the rapid current has carved from its rocky bed above, and thrust out like a pier into the lake. An ancient mill leans against the northern hillside, and from its sluiceway a crystal torrent leaps from the verge of the precipice, falls like a silver ribbon perhaps a hundred and fifty feet, then breaks in spray against the sloping rock and sparkles down the cliff fifty feet further to rejoin its parent stream, making one of the prettiest cascades in all this region.

Promising ourselves the pleasure of returning some day to make a fuller acquaintance with the glens of Rock Stream and Big Stream, and the other unvisited and little known glens-cañons in reality--that cut the rocky shores of Seneca Lake into so many fantastic forms, we pass on, rising higher and higher above the lake until we turn the crest of the ridge and enter the fertile rolling country of Yates and Ontario. The crops were harvested weeks ago, the fields are bare, and the lingering brown leaves that kept up a show of Indian summer south of the mountains, have joined their old companions and lie piled in hollows and fencecorners, or are aimlessly drifting over the dry stubble, the playthings of the wind. That we are in a thrifty, wealthy region is evident from the numerous handsome dwellings, white-painted, green windowed, and bristling with lightning-rods; from the great colonies of overflowing barns, and the clean, well-fenced fields and woodlands that make up the scenery. From a social and political point of view it is a satisfaction to know that such things abound. It is pleasant to catch glimpses of them as we rumble along, but it is tiresome to give them individual attention. So the lookout is abandoned for the easy-chairs within, where w sit talking over our plans for the coming week, reviewing the scenes and incidents of our pleasant life in the Special, and giving half an ear to the railroady conversation going on between our hosts and their senior guests. The prosperity and prospects of the